Comments on: the drop-down cage: gender identity and profile specifications http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2010/12/16/the-drop-down-cage-gender-identity-and-profile-specifications/ We live in a cyborg society. Technology has infiltrated the most fundamental aspects of our lives: social organization, the body, even our self-concepts. This blog chronicles our new, augmented reality. Thu, 09 Apr 2015 21:16:14 +0000 hourly 1 By: Hooray, Facebook thinks I’m a real person » Cyborgology http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2010/12/16/the-drop-down-cage-gender-identity-and-profile-specifications/#comment-57017 Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:54:16 +0000 http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/?p=817#comment-57017 […] out that my very first post here was about Facebook (and DeviantArt) and gender […]

]]> By: David http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2010/12/16/the-drop-down-cage-gender-identity-and-profile-specifications/#comment-178 Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:18:31 +0000 http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/?p=817#comment-178 Leave a textbox. Let people put whatever they want in it. The marketing whizzes can just do a search in their rdb of how many put down male, female or some other category.

]]> By: KN http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2010/12/16/the-drop-down-cage-gender-identity-and-profile-specifications/#comment-171 Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:25:22 +0000 http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/?p=817#comment-171 If I were an advertiser, I’d think I’d be interested in knowing how big a demographic I was failing to target by traditional gendered marketing. It’s entirely possible that the number of folks who fall outside the usual two options is low, but how do you know if you don’t give people an opportunity to say?

]]> By: Alii http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2010/12/16/the-drop-down-cage-gender-identity-and-profile-specifications/#comment-170 Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:07:51 +0000 http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/?p=817#comment-170 I’ve seen several different ways to handle this, including just an open textbox. I think Diaspora is doing that and there was a bit of a to-do over it. As a split between ‘targeted advertising’ and ‘representing identity’, however, I think that a slider-bar with many increments might be more effective. It would still be a binary system, which sucks, but advertising could be targeted at ranges of values while being more representational.

If only there was a way to make three-dimensional graph, with the gender axis being ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, and ‘queer’. I think that would cover all sorts of people, with (0,0,0) meaning ‘none of the above’. Advertising companies could target towards regions of the cube. Simple math, that, and far more versatile.

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